So I am a glutton for punishment. I swore off DMing, but had an idea I kind of want to try.

If you have seen the playtest article in dragon magazine for hybrid characters, keep reading. I was thinking a sort of gestahlt (sp?) hybrid character. Basically, each character would combine 4 different classes into one character using the hybrid character rules.

Maybe I would have a theme or something, but that's the basic idea. Theme could be all same power source or from one role (four defenders in one character).

Characters would basically be "elite" and count as two characters. So I would treat a three person party as 6 characters with respect to difficulty of encounters/exp/treasure/etc...

To overcome the numbers issue with respect to characters vs. bad guys, everything would be double including number of @wills, # of encounter powers, # of daily powers, etc...

Thoughts? Potential concerns? Feedback? All are welcome.

Jmkeylon

07-24-2009, 05:09 PM

sounds interesting... could take some work for balance issues.

yukonhorror

07-24-2009, 05:10 PM

between characters I am not worried about. I am worried about making it too easy or too hard for the players.

Valdar

07-24-2009, 06:45 PM

Probably too easy. Twice the hit points means twice the amount of time to find a way to activate a healing surge, and twice the effects from it, so the already-easy access to healing would increase.

yukonhorror

07-24-2009, 06:56 PM

good point. keeping the amount of HS the same would be best.

johnsoncake

07-26-2009, 03:51 PM

Hmmm.... Do you have link to the article? I kind of like the idea, although I'm not familiar with gestalt rules.

Q-man

07-27-2009, 06:30 AM

Adding additional at will powers I don't think would upset things too much. Doubling the number of encounter or daily powers would definitely make them much stronger. As you said though counting them as two characters for planning encounters could balance that.

How would you set their defenses, apply all the bonuses from each class? That would give them pretty good Fort, Ref, and Will defenses early on. I'm not sure that changes much though. In the early levels those defenses don't get attacked as often, and in high levels you'll have so many other bonuses that those little bonuses will be trivial.

Aside from the great amount of diversity that it gives the player, in terms of powers to use, I'm not sure it really is all that game breaking. They'd clearly be more powerful than the average character, but I'm not sure it would ruin the game if all the players were built that way.

Valdar

07-27-2009, 01:19 PM

After giving it some thought, it might not be as easy as I thought- here are some weaknesses of the gestalt characters that come to mind:

--A party of six gets six of each action a turn. Three gestalts get three. Solo monsters have this problem too: they rate as five opponents, but can only act as two at best.
--Rogues need other party members to create flank opportunities so they can get CA. A rogue without CA can't do sneak attack damage, and as a result, isn't a striker.
--As you get into Paragon and everything is throwing down status conditions (including minions), each failed save affects the equivalent of two characters. Look up Horde Ghouls as an example of minions that immobilize their targets on a hit- it will be fairly easy to pin down the whole party. Now imagine hitting a gestalt character with Dominate- not only tying up the entire character for a turn, but also taking a swing at a comrade? Harsh-